For Pinegrove‘s Evan Stephens Hall, making music is his life’s hub. Everything else is just a spoke in the wheel.
“I took [college] seriously, but if I was writing a song I would always prioritize that. Even if I had a homework assignment, if there was a melody running around in my head, I resolved that I would catch it,” Hall says from the back of a tour van somewhere between Houston and Austin, Texas. “Because I see all of these other aspects of my life as supplementary to writing songs. I love reading novels, especially in as far as it informs my songwriting and makes me a better artist. I love visiting museums, especially because it makes me think about songs differently.”
Hall’s intense dedication to music has tripped him up here and there—he says he “pulled so many all-nighters” at Kenyon College—but it also fuels Pinegrove’s power and precision. Last month the band debuted one of 2016’s best albums so far, Cardinal, on Run for Cover Records.
At just eight songs and with no particularly boisterous peaks or bleak valleys, Cardinal is emotionally accessible and effortlessly appealing. It sets Hall’s restless vocals and anxieties about life and loneliness against the warmth of an unassuming guitar-rock band and, most distinctively, healthy doses of twang—a rollicking banjo here, the swoop of pedal steel guitar there.